Prisoners and inmates in confinement facilities and other institutions have limited access to communicate with and interact with people outside of the institution. Such inmates can use tightly controlled phone systems to call loved ones and friends outside of the institution and can receive visitors in person. These outlets of communication and interaction fail to allow sufficient interaction to support contacts that the correctional system may want to encourage, or at least not discourage. For example, it is desirable to encourage imprisoned parents to stay in contact with their children. Encouraging such content may help prevent the parent relationship from irreconcilably deteriorating while the parent is in prison. However, it is often difficult or infeasible for an inmate to help a child with homework over the phone. In person visitation, on the other hand, allows better face-to-face interaction, but is often severely restricted in frequency and duration and far less convenient as it requires the family member to travel, and in many cases someone old enough to drive the family member, to the institution.
Businesses and recreational users use virtual meeting and virtual collaboration software to share computing device screen content with one another, interaction on virtual white boards, and otherwise collaborate during online meetings. These business/personal use-oriented virtual meeting systems, however, fail to provide adequate scheduling, control, or the level of security and monitoring that is needed in the context of prisoners and other inmates in confinement facilities. As examples, it is often desirable to ensure that an inmate who committed a crime against another individual is not able to threaten or otherwise contact the victim of that crime while in prison, to ensure that an inmate with a vendetta against a law enforcement officer, judge, or other individual is not able to threaten that person or plot revenge by contacting hit men or other persons outside of the facility, and to ensure that inmates do not plan escape or other illegal activities by contacting persons outside of the institution. Allowing inmates to use business/personal use-oriented virtual meeting systems could make it possible for the inmates to accomplish these and other types of prohibited communications without detection.